


Alkynes of Trouble

by NewerConstellations



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Academia, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Puns, Comedy, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Love Potion/Spell, Love/Hate, Nerds in Love, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:14:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24918169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NewerConstellations/pseuds/NewerConstellations
Summary: Biochem PhD-students Benjamin O. Solo and Rey Jakksun are assigned as lab partners in their final year to research a new “Universal Blocker Serum” for both Alphas and Omegas.Good news: it’s an exciting opportunity and will make their careers.Bad news: they can barely tolerate each other.Benjamin’s far too quiet and a priggish stick-in-the-mud, while Rey’s a chatterbox with a terrible sense of humor who leaves crisps-dust on the pipettes.  They rub each other in all the wrong ways, until one day after a freak accident in the lab they begin to rub each other... differently.An enemies-to-lovers, non-traditional A/B/O with a love potion and bad science puns.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 40
Kudos: 122
Collections: A Picture is worth 1000 Words - PL Summer Exchange





	1. Pranks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ReyloBrit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReyloBrit/gifts).



> This is a gift for ReyloBrit inspired by her wonderful moodboard, included below! Thank you for sharing your inspiration and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Tip of the hat to Animal and her fic "The Office Life" which helped inspire this one. Please go read all her work, posthaste. 
> 
> Any terrible science puns and memes included in text will be referenced in the bottom notes for citations. They are not mine, I googled it.

Rey Jakkusun coasts down the smooth cement walk in front of Chandrila University’s Department of Biochemistry Lab building. Her toe pushes down the silver pedal on the back wheel to glide to a stop right in front of the bike rack. She’s got the ride down to a science now . . . so to speak.

She doesn’t bother chaining up the old scooter, because who would bother stealing it? If they want it, they probably need it more than her, anyway. Her helmet is tucked into her backpack as she takes the stairs two at a time, a tingly feeling of excitement growing in her belly.

Her Converse Chuck Taylor’s squeak slightly on the freshly-buffed floors. She stops before Lab Room B. The lights are off. 

Good, he’s not here yet.

Stealing a glance over her shoulder in both directions, she ensures she’s not being watched. Why does she do this? She doesn't know. It’s nonsensical. This is her lab, too, and doing so only makes her appear that much more suspicious than if she just walked in the door, as usual.

Regardless, she’s in and her mission is burning a hole in her backpack. Her shoulders can’t help but curl forward in a cartoonishly-sneaky manner. If only she had a thin mustache to twirl she could achieve the full effect. Instead, Rey pushes her glasses up her nose and snickers to herself. 

The rats hear her and start to vocalize, eager for her to scratch them in their daily greeting. She shushes them and with maximum stealth, slips out the folded sheet of paper to lay down on his keyboard. Her grin is irrepressible now, her cheeks almost hurt as she sees it lying in wait like a cobra. She tiptoes back to the door to peek. The coast is clear, the hall just as empty as before. 

Rey darts out of the room as if the flames of hell were crackling at her heels, the sheer excitement of the prank already fueling her with adrenaline. She hits the back stairwell at top speed and as the door slams behind her, breaks into a giggle fit and heads to the back alley to munch on a bar and scroll through Instagram to kill time.

She can’t wait to see his face.

______

A half-hour later, Rey’s back at the lab door. The lights are on this time. Her grin is automatic as she opens the door, already anticipating what will come next.

Her lab partner is there, as expected, seated at his work station facing the window. Benjamin O. Solo doesn’t bother looking up from the microscope to acknowledge another human has entered the room. In other words, nothing seems out of sorts. 

His large frame is folded over in the chair and his dark, shaggy hair is brushed forward and across his forehead. She eyes him for a moment, then closes the door behind her with a rattle. “Good afternoon, Benjamin,” she says cheerily and moves to her own desk with a spring in her step. “How are you today?”

He slowly sits up straight and turns to look at her over his shoulder. His dark brown eyes are full of wary caution, as if the question itself may be a trick. “Fine, thank you. How are you?”

“Good.” She shrugs off her backpack and pulls her hair back into a messy bun on the top of her head. His eyes wander the wall beside her, as if he’s measuring his words. She bobs on the balls of her feet, waiting for it. 

“Were you here earlier, by any chance?” he finally produces.

“Hmm?” It’s a noncommittal sound, so not precisely a lie. Rey’s a terrible liar. The nerves are bubbling in her stomach like champagne, and she has to pinch her lips shut to not give herself away. “Why?”

“I found this on my computer.” He unfolds the paper she had just placed there. On it, she sees the absolutely terrible science pun she’d printed out last night, the one that had tears beading in the corner of her eyes. 

“Do you know how it got here?” Benjamin asks, clearly perplexed. 

Instead of answering, her grin breaks free. “Oy, that’s funny, dontcha think?”

He looks back down at it, rolling his full lips together. It looks as if the thought never crossed his mind. He considers it for a few moments, evidently judging its comedic merit, and taking in a deep breath, says in a deep voice as neutral as ever is, “No, I don’t think so.” 

He places it back on the desk. A beat of silence passes. “I wonder why someone gave it to me?”

“Maybe they thought you could use a laugh?” Rey shrugs in a show of nonchalance.

He looks back down at it. “No name. Probably a mistake.” He drops it in the trash can.

She resists the urge to roll her eyes as her shoulders deflate. Her toe pushes her backpack under her desk as she walks over to her lab coat, arms feeling heavy and slack.

One of these days. One of these days, she’ll get him to crack a smile. 

____________

  
  


Two hour laters, the lab is filled with the mechanical hum of spinning machinery and the squeaks and rattles from the rodents in the cages.

She adjusts her bulky, over-the-ear headphones and turns the music on her phone up. Benjamin’s response is as predictable as it is prompt.

“Rey.”

She pretends she can’t hear him. Her old school hip-hop music is cranked up so loudly so that it could very well be the truth. In fact, she’d _prefer_ to not hear him. See: the aforementioned loud music. 

“Rey. You’re doing it again.”

She tunes him out and continues to transcribe the sequence data into the spreadsheet as her head bops along to the steady beat. He’s floating around her periphery, like a dark cloud of disapproval, so she takes the opportunity to close her eyes and just vibe to the music. Pretending that she’s heard nothing. As far as he knows, she can’t hear him. He’s never picked up on her little game, even after weeks of it. 

“Rey.”

Benjamin’s still there, frowning like a stern founding father in a lab coat. He’s so tall and broad that he would be imposing if you saw him walking down the street. At first Rey was intimidated, back when they were matched up as partners by Professor Canady at the start of the school year, before she realized that he was not only unfailingly polite but also in all likelihood more terrified of her than vice-versa, and they settled into this dynamic of vague disapproval and passive aggressive hijinks.

“Rey, your music.” 

It’s almost a whine now. After months of working together, in close and awkward quarters, she knows this: Benjamin never relents. It’s the one thing she could count on more than anything– more than Dr. Canady wearing that same blue sweater three times a week each winter or the delivery of the analyse enzymes every Tuesday afternoon, more reliable even than the sun rising in the east– her PhD research lab partner has a fixed and immutable quality of uptight priggishness. Which makes it all the more fun to fuck with him. 

_“Rey.”_

At last, she blinks up at him in false innocence. “WHAT?” she says far too loudly for the small space, just to enjoy the way in which he flinches back and presses his generous lips into a tight, straight line. Benjamin takes a deep inhale, and she watches his wide chest expand like a bellows. It's like he’s physically attempting to rearrange his patience inside his chest. As frustrated as he clearly gets with her, he’s never been anything but proper and professional in his manner. Which makes her even more committed to mapping out the boundaries of his seemingly-limitless endurance to her misbehavior. 

He over-enunciates the words and taps his own large ear to mime along, “Your music is too loud. It’s very distracting.”

She smiles brightly with all her teeth. “WANT ME TO TURN IT DOWN?”

Oh, the sheer pain that washes over his face. The fact that she can completely obliterate his sense of calm just by being her regular, chaotic self is a newly-discovered skill. Several weeks into the semester– after they’d been assigned to work together on this project– she realized that winning him over was an impossible task. He was simply too stuck-in-the-mud, too regimented, _too Benjamin O. Solo_ to ever approve of the messy likes of her. So Rey had chosen the exact opposite route. She leaned heavily on the same tactics held by eight-year-old boys around the world and committed herself fully to the task of annoying the ever-loving shit out of him instead. 

A girl’s gotta stay entertained.

“Yes, please,” He says politely before returning to his samples with a sigh and muttering quietly under his breath. “You’ll damage your hearing.”

“No, I won’t,” she replies, head bopping gleefully as she drops her Spotify volume down a bar or two. He doesn’t glance back in her direction. She wonders if he even noticed that by hearing his quiet tone she accidentally showed her hand that she's been messing with him all along.

Doesn’t matter. Benjamin can’t stand her, and it’s obvious he never will. In a few more months, the project will be complete and they'll be rid of each other for good. 

Not a moment too soon. 


	2. Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a silly trifle of a fic, but I thank you for enjoying it with me! 
> 
> Rey is a little rat, but hopefully it will pay off for her (and Benjamin) at the end.

“Come in, Rey, and have a seat.”

She plops into the worn leather chair by Dr. Canady’s desk and rubs at the insole of her sneaker with her other toe. For someone who was in trouble so often growing up, she’s never much liked the feeling. The rare taste of attention was nice, but disappointing an authority figure always left a bitter taste in her mouth. 

Her mentor peers over the stacks of manila file folders and loose papers, the towers of books held open with other books as page markers, and the occasional stained paper cup with the dredges of coffee. Dr. Canady is even more of a personal disaster than she is, and he’s always made her feel comfortable and at ease as a result. He ruffles a thick hand through his sandy-blonde hair, which seems to have skipped over the grey stage on its way to white, and smiles warmly at her.

“We need to have a talk. It’s about Benjamin Solo.”

She grunts. Of course the big brat ratted her out. Probably sitting smugly in the lab right now knowing she’s getting a talking-to from their professor.

Rey clears her throat. “Yes.”

“He seems to think that you are messing with him, so to speak.”

“Oh?” Rey lifts her brows and appears as innocent as possible, eyes gone appropriately-wide behind her glasses. “Really?”

Canady smiles. “Which, let’s be honest, probably doesn’t take too much effort to accomplish.”

“What did he say?” She’s truly curious to know which behavior has bothered him the most. For her own research purposes, of course.

“Well, let’s see.” He rifles around the desk. After a precarious moment of shuffling, he withdraws a folded piece of paper. Typed. There are paragraphs of text, all single spaced.

Rey swallows.

“Playing your music very loudly. Not submitting your data on time. Eating very crunchy foods and leaving crumbs on surfaces and equipment.”

Rey snickers to herself and covers her mouth with a hand when he glances at her.

“Suspicion of leaving notes with not-funny jokes–”

Rey mumbles under her breath. “Well, that’s a matter of opinion, I’d say.”

“–in a manner that appears to be hazing.”

“Hazing?” Rey asks, unfamiliar with the Americanism. 

“Bullying, as they call it.”

“Oh, right.” She nods in understanding, then realizes that seems like an admission of guilt, so corrects herself, “I mean, oh, how terrible.”

“You are often late to the lab. You slurp through straws loudly and play with the rats too much.”

That last bit is a bridge too far. “The rats are much more cooperative when they get their daily scritches!” She huffs. “I would call that a difference in methodology, at worst.”

“Quite right,” Dr. Canady refolds the paper and drops it on the desk. “May I be frank with you, Rey?”

“Certainly.” She braces herself.

“As you can tell, Benjamin has very little sense of humor. And I think you, young woman, have quite a lot.”

She quirks up the corner of her lip, taking that for a compliment, and waits for him to finish.

“You two are not a natural pair. However, in the future you will be working with other colleagues just like Mr. Solo. And despite his, well, somewhat trying personal habits, he’s quite a good technician. You could actually learn a lot from him, if you choose to.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, some of her goodwill fading at the suggestion she could learn from Benjamin. Of all the people in the world, he’d be the last on her list of teachers.

“That’s up to you. But regardless, you will need to learn how to work with people like Benjamin and complete your research on deadline. Any distractions, as it were, are not conducive to your goal. The potential applications of this research . . . well, you’d both have a running start on your careers if you can nail this universal blocker serum. All you have to do is get along.”

The implication is clear. She looks down at her hands and nods. “Yes, Doctor. I understand.”

“Good, good.” He stands and straightens out his lab coat. She rises and walks to the door.

“Oh, and Rey?”

“Yes?”

He bites back a smile. “If you find any of these ‘jokes’ lying around, I’d rather like to see them myself. I haven’t had a good laugh in ages.”

Rey grins back at him. “Of course, Doctor Canady. Thank you.”

____________

  
  
  


Thirty minutes later, Benjamin walks into the lab and startles to find her there. She hears the keys jangle in his hand, but she doesn’t look up from the slide on the microscope to see his surprise for herself.

She smiles broadly behind the lens. “Hello, partner.”

“Um. Hello.”

She maintains the same calm demeanor as she sits up and marks down her notes on the scratch pad. When she finally turns to him, he’s still caught immobile by the door, keys in his hand, a look of slightly fearful anticipation visible on his features.

He thinks she’ll be mad about the tattling. She decides at that moment not to mention it at all. Even more fun to keep him in the dark and see how he’ll twist himself up trying to figure it out on his own.

  
  


“How are you, Benjamin?” she asks sweetly, making sure she smiles with her mouth closed so her disarming dimples will pop out.

His eyes widen further. He must be rightly terrified now. “Um. Fine, I am fine, thank you.” He blinks. “Are you fine? I mean, err, how . . . are you?”

“Oh, just dandy! Beautiful weather.” She slips off the stool to go to the back for more stabilizing solution, and he slightly flinches at the sudden movement. The poor dear. He’s treating her like a ticking time bomb. Yet Benjamin made his own bed, she’s not about to drag him out of it.

She sorts through jars in the fridge and hears him sigh and walk over to his station. She peeks surreptitiously over her shoulder to look.

He’s standing very still staring down at the keyboard. On it sits another one of her “jokes.” She’s not about to quit that habit, not when he hasn’t overtly caught her planting them yet. Not when she’s getting so much pleasure from it.

She’ll get him to crack a smile. She just has to hit that nexus of nerdy humor and the unexpected pun. Hearing his laugh will be considered a victory in what has to be the lamest game of wits known to man.

But hey, what else does she have to do, anyway?

He unfolds the paper and stares down at it.

He sighs, deeply. Almost forlorn. She would feel pity for the distress of a creature who sighs like that, if not for the fact that she’s the one who caused such misery with a mere cartoon.

Benjamin licks his lips slowly. She walks back to her microscope and ignores him with all her might, except for being attuned to his every sound, movement, and expression from her peripheral vision.

He opens the cabinet next to his stool and finds the folder where he’s been saving her little missives. He slips this one inside.

Wordlessly, he closes the drawer.

Rey scowls at her slide with a new sense of vigor.

Time to up her game.

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars characters are property of The Walt Disney Company.  
> Any comics are used in fair use and property of the artists cited.  
> Original story and characters are copyright © 2020 by NewerConstellations. All rights reserved.
> 
> This work is intended for personal use by Ao3 users while posted. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of author, except in the cases of certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Please do not transmit downloads beyond personal use.
> 
> For permission requests, write to newerconstellations@gmail.com.


End file.
